On Thursday, the India Today Media Network faced yet another embarrassing situation after the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) issued a notice to its Hindi news channel Aaj Tak news channel for violating Allahabad High Court’s order on maintaining the confidentiality of the investigation in the Hathras murder case.
According to reports, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had asked the authority to take appropriate action against the channel after receiving a complaint filed by Congress party supporter Saket Gokhale.
Congress supporter Gokhale had written a letter to the Additional Chief Secretary of the UP Government accusing Aaj Tak of broadcasting a news report about the ongoing CBI investigation despite there was a clear direction from the High Court to maintain confidentiality with regard to the investigation of the case.
“In this report, news channel Aaj Tak purportedly claimed to report on the investigation of the CBI in the Hathras case and about questions asked by the CBI team to the victim’s family during the investigation. May it be noted that this is a brazen violation of the orders of the Hon’ble Allahabad High Court,” the letter noted.
Following the complaint, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has now asked NBSA to take appropriate action against Aaj Tak within 15 days for violating HC order in Hathras Case. ‘
On 14th September, a 19-year-old woman was strangulated, who succumbed to injuries on 29th September. The Hathras case has become the ground for political drama and media propaganda.
NBSA orders Aaj Tak to apologise live, pay fine for spreading fake news
The India Today group has been facing the wrath of country’s news regulators and was recently penalised by NSBA for airing fake news relating to actor late Sushant Singh Rajput.
The Hindi news outlet of India Today group – Aaj Tak had peddled several fake news relating to Sushant Singh Rajput. It had published an elaborate piece on late actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s “last tweets” on June 16, two days after the actor was found dead in his house in Mumbai. However, the media network had telecast fake tweets attributing to late actor Sushant Singh Rajput and had passed off them as his last tweets.
Following that, the NBSA asked Aaj Tak to pay a fine of Rs 1 lakh and had asked the broadcaster to air an apology admitting on national television that it did not conduct the due diligence required prior to telecasting the tweets. The NBSA had found Aaj Tak guilty of violating guidelines, had ordered Aaj Tak to submit the proof of compliance of the telecast of the apology to the association within 7 days of telecast.
